Home Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

Streamin is bad for High Quality audio and Niche Music

The main difference between downloads and streaming are two fold:

With downloads, small sites can exist. Their fixed costs (web hosting) are very low. Variable costs are low (largest cost for any of the common digital formats is credit card fee.) There are also small fixed costs to add titles to a web site. (Apart from licensing costs and editorial costs, a small amount of semi-skilled labor is needed to rip, package, upload, price and enter SKU into database.) There are also monthly costs per title available for sale. Because album pricing is large compared to storage costs, it is possible to keep material available for sale that sells very infrequently. Pricing is large on the basis that customers will listen to each album (or track they like) multiple times. Also, there is the "hoarding" aspect, i.e. one benefits from the expectation of being able to play anything in one's library anytime one wants. Because of the high pricing and the choice made by the customer, purchases provides a significant feedback mechanism enabling the listener to fund the musicians.

With streaming, users pay a monthly (or yearly, ...) fee to subscribe to a library of music. This decision is not directly correlated with the particular music available, since this is unknown (and changes) from time to time. It is a lot of work for a potential customer to make the commitment to subscribe to a service and the risks are that he will sign up and the albums he wants aren't available. A large library is required to justify a subscription. This entails large entry costs, large storage costs, etc... This works for mainstream music, just as Netflix works for popular movies. It does not work well for niche music, just as Netflix doesn't stream the classic movies I want to watch. (This includes musical genres interesting to a small minority of listeners and high quality recordings interesting to a minority of listeners.)

In addition, the costs of streaming are much greater than with downloads. I've already alluded to the necessity for large libraries, but it is worse. Bandwidth costs are substantially higher for streaming compared to downloads, especially for high resolution media. The bandwidth that is needed for streaming is needed in realtime, which means it tends to be concentrated during peak periods of time. In addition, streamed music is heard once and then discarded by the listener, unlike downloads which are typically played multiple times. There are further costs to deal with bandwidth issues. These involve adding caching servers spread around many ISPs, something that Netflix has been doing for movies. In addition to increasing storage costs through replication of data, there are large economies of scale associated with business aspects, including lobbyists and legal battles. (Example: Netflix vs. Comcast, FCC Net Neutrality.)

In summary, streaming is bad for high quality audio and niche musical genres. It favors large central operations. Higher costs mean that more of the customer's money goes to middlemen and less to musicians and quality record labels.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  VH Audio  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Streamin is bad for High Quality audio and Niche Music - Tony Lauck 12/21/1509:59:06 12/21/15 (0)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.